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Dennis Burke, who abruptly resigned in late August as the United States Attorney for Arizona after becoming mired in controversy, had to deal with another traumatic event earlier that month: Burke nearly killed a pedestrian with his vehicle in an accident on North Central Avenue.
Phoenix police records show that Burke was driving his 2011 Ford Escape southbound on Central near Camelback Road when he struck 67-year-old Robert Maresco, who was walking the street in an unmarked crosswalk.
The previously unpublicized incident occurred just after 8 on the evening of August 3 near the Windsor Restaurant, on the southeast corner of Central and Oregon.
Burke was not cited in the accident. Officers estimated that he was traveling at about 30 miles per hour, under the posted limit of 35 mph., and the police report suggests that he did not show any signs of impairment.
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Bob Maresco is a Phoenix-based certified public accountant/financial planner well-known for his involvement in various community activities. He has been hospitalized at St. Joseph’s Neuro Rehabilitation Center for two months, and family members say he is scheduled to be released next week.
Burke resigned from his job (many have speculated he was forced out by the same Barack Obama administration that had appointed him) a little more than three weeks after the car accident, in the wake of the infamous “Operation Fast and Furious” gun-trafficking scandal, which involved local feds providing weapons to Mexican bad guys, ostensibly for the purpose of tracking smugglers.
We tried to contact Burke for comment, but he declined through a third-party, citing (no kidding) the advice of his car-insurance company.
